When former United States president Donald Trump boarded Air Force 1 for the last time, with the classic song “My Way” playing in the background, and new president Joe Biden took the oath of office, many, but not all, came together in a collective sigh of relief.
Trump still has his supporters, but he can no longer govern his way, or at all, as voters supplanted his approach with something more along the lines of the idiom: My Way or the Highway. The majority avoided his way, instead choosing to send him on down that highway.
The transition brought four tumultuous years to an end, or did it? The president and vice-president are new, Democrats are now in control of the Senate (by the thinnest of margins) and still hold the upper hand in the House of Representatives, but the will of all people does not change in a day. Democrats will be happy, and maybe some Republicans in need of relief, too, but not hardcore Trump supporters.
How many of the 74 million voters who chose Trump believed in him or were just voting the way they always do, regardless of the leader, and based on their own principles and values? The next Republican leader will find out.
Biden’s tenure will impact Canada and the rest of the world, but the divide within the United States will take much longer to close, if it’s even possible.
Americans often refer to their president as the leader of the free world, which is a contradiction. If there was a leader of the free world, everyone would need a vote, not just the citizens of one country. Hardly a free democracy otherwise.
It may be more about who is perceived as the best leader among democratic countries. Trump never rose to that plateau. Will Biden?
